Smart firms reward robust workers, be they efficient fry cooks or Yasiel Puig again batting productively for the Dodgers.

Southland teachers, along this metric, deserve a pay raise after lifting student learning over the past generation. L.A. Unified’s average pupil performs a full grade-level higher today in reading and math than in 2002, as tracked by rigorous federal exams.

But stalled contract talks have eclipsed this kumbaya moment, what’s deteriorated into a mud-slinging face-off between union leaders and schools chief Austin Beutner. Rather than scaffolding-up from shared success, they are lunging at each other’s throat.

Beutner sweetened the district’s wage offer last month, a chess move instantly rejected by union president Alex Caputo-Pearl. “We will not be bought off by salaries,” he told me, instead pitching a broad reform agenda, demanding “attention to charter reform, smaller classes, special education funding, expanding early learning programs.”

Hopping mad are teachers over the steady incursion of charter schools, now attracting one in every five L.A. Unified students, along with their corresponding revenues. “We’re not living on a level playing field,” Brian Fritch said, a civics teacher at Esteban Torres in Boyle Heights. “They are cherry picking the kids they serve.”

So, labor presses for a rainbow costly new programs. Overall, “we want to reinvest in public education,” Caputo-Pearl said, “rather than downsize and privatize,” a slap at Beutner’s finance-banking pedigree.

But innuendo aside, the union’s ambitious list of reforms would sink L.A. Unified’s budget into the red by a half-billion dollars next year ­– with no new revenues in sight.

So, after 19 months of stalled negotiations, a massive teacher strike is likely, just in time for the holidays. “We’re resigned to the fact, we are willing to strike,” Fritch reports from the rank and file.

Cooler heads may prevail, as the state’s fact-finding panel no takes charge. They will pour over the district’s ledgers and hopefully illuminate the union’s fuzzy math. Labor leaders, for instance, dodge responsibility for ample benefits won in prior contracts.

Spending per pupil has climbed 30 percent district-wide since 2007, just prior to the recession, according to United Way. But nearly two-fifths of this boost will never reach classrooms: instead it’s diverted to cover teachers’ rising pension and health-care costs. Districts like San Francisco and Long Beach pay one-quarter less into health plans than does L.A. Unified.

Unionists also claim the sky is falling in Chicken Little fashion, rather than building from real progress. Caputo-Pearl wants another $205 million to enrich the ratio of pupils per teacher, which fell below 20-to-one last year, thanks to shrinking enrollments and Gov. Jerry Brown’s massive infusion of new dollars into the district.

Labor also demands $263 million for additional staff who serve children with mild learning disabilities, most with weak reading skills. But per-pupil spending on these students ­– even in the district’s middle-class schools ­– has grown nearly two-thirds just since 2014.

Union math is spot-on when pointing out sluggish wage growth. The average L.A. Unified teacher earned $75,094 in 2017, just $700 above mean earnings a decade earlier, adjusting for inflation. The average Long Beach teacher earned $91,074 last year.

At the same time, holding charter educators accountable would cost almost nothing. These alternative school do worsen the segregation of high from low-achieving kids, our research shows. School board members now ignore this inequity, as some enjoy political contributions from charter enthusiasts Eli Broad and Netflix creator Reed Hastings.

Rekindling trust is the long-term challenge facing both sides. A teacher strike would further corrode faith in L.A. Unified ­– just as talk of new revenue options gets underway.

Beutner “has little experience in education and lots in downsizing,” as Caputo-Pearl likes to say. That’s true. But both sides must get their facts straight, then learn together to define common ground. Otherwise, it’s L.A.’s half-million students and families who will lose big.

Bruce Fuller, an education professor at UC Berkeley, is finishing a book on the history of civic activism and schooling in Los Angeles.

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